“It’s like a scene out of a sci-fi movie — thousands, possibly millions, of king crabs are marching through icy, deep-sea waters and up the Antarctic slope.”

“They are coming from the deep, somewhere between 6,000 to 9,000 feet down,” said James McClintock, Ph.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham Endowed Professor of Polar and Marine Biology. [referring to thousands if not millions of crabs]

Shell-crushing crabs haven’t been in Antarctica, Earth’s southernmost continent, for hundreds or thousands, if not millions, of years, McClintock said. “They have trouble regulating magnesium ions in their body fluids and get kind of drunk at low temperatures.”

Much like the recent tornado outbreak in the Untied States, we are seeing very strange patterns in weather, nature, and even in modern man; but is there more to this mass migration to Antarctica?

“Scientists have observed a “super-aggregation” of more than 300 humpback whales gorging on the largest swarm of Antarctic krill seen in more than 20 years in bays along the Western Antarctic Peninsula.”

The sightings, made in waters still largely ice-free deep into austral autumn, suggest the previously little-studied bays are important late-season foraging grounds for the endangered whales. But they also highlight how rapid climate change is affecting the region.

The Duke University-led team tracked the super-aggregation of krill and whales during a six-week expedition to Wilhelmina Bay and surrounding waters in May 2009. They published their findings today (April 27) in the online science journalPLoS ONE.

“Such an incredibly dense aggregation of whales and krill has never been seen before in this area at this time of year,” says Duke marine biologist Douglas Nowacek. Most studies have focused on whale foraging habitats located in waters farther offshore in austral summer.

Whatever the case, these are defiantly interesting times to say the least.

Higgins News Network – HNN Headline News

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